Jesus edited.

Last Sunday I preached on Luke 4:14-30 – the story of Jesus preaching at Nazareth. In that story, Jesus reads from Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor”

And that is where he stops the text. It’s literally in the middle of a sentence. The text in Isaiah reads

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
    and the day of vengeance of our God,

But that isn’t what Jesus read. He stopped it midstream. It isn’t that Jesus did not know the line was there – he was reading. He just chose not to read it. Not to credit it.

Jesus edited.

This, Jesus said, is the year of the Lord’s favor – but not the Lord’s vengeance. He goes on to make the point by pointing out stories they know where foreigners and refugees get preferential treatment, while they – the chosen people – did not.

Unsurprisingly to anyone who has spent much time in church circles, this did not please the crowd. In fact, they tried to kill him.

There is something in us humans that want to see the other guy get theirs. That wants to see the people we do not like get punished. The writer Ann Lamott says that it is a sure sign you have made God in your image when God hates all the same people you do.

There is, right now, a lot of God-talk in the air. People are using God’s name to justify some truly heinous activities. But people in Jesus day did that too. Jesus refused to give them ammunition to do it. So he edited scripture.

I know we are in a very divided time right now. Tempers are hot and division is high and there are systems in place to exacerbate that division. So, I want to be perfectly clear:

The good news of God does not allow for vengeance, does not come at the expense of others, and cannot include retribution and wrath and punishment. God’s love is not just for people who believe like we do, or who love like we do, or who vote like we do.

The Lord’s good favor extends beyond whatever borders we throw up, and includes those who we despise, who we dislike, and those we disagree with. The love of God especially includes the poor, the refugee, and the migrant (There are more than 2,000 verses of scripture in support of this) and all of those who have had religion used as a weapon against them.

Every time we use religion to draw a line to keep people out, Jesus is with the people on the other side of that line.

Every single time.